


wild like kids on concrete

by Utopiste



Series: 30 days writing challenge [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Perks of Being a Wallflower References, F/F, Jasper Jordan is a Good Bro, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 13:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20508092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Utopiste/pseuds/Utopiste
Summary: "So is this how it’s going to go every time I break up with someone?” Clarke tried to joke, throat aching with the effort. “You’ll be standing outside my window with a boombox ready to comfort me with late-night chicken wings or something?”Lexa’s gaze lingered on her as she said: “Or something.”





	wild like kids on concrete

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day one of CommodoreCliche's writing challenge: "Pick a line from your favorite book/movie/poem/show/song. This line is now the first line of your story." 
> 
> yes my fave book is the perks so what can't a girl be a hipster in peace? also this is literally me trying to remember what it feels like to be a teenager and being super sappy in the process. title from Heaven by Troye Sivan because. gay suburban teens 
> 
> i've had to try and reupload this like THREE TIMES because it wasn't posting right, i mean i would still die for every single person who works on AO3 but wow

“We accept the love we think we deserve, Clarke,” Lexa said in her solemn voice, face very serious, and Clarke considered kicking her off the windowsill right here and now.

But Lexa was her friend – not her best friend, no, because if he knew she had even considered it Bellamy would kill her or Lexa or maybe just sulk for days – and she was hanging on to her window after climbing up two floors worth of tree trunk, all because she had heard about Finn. She was her friend, and she was breathing heavily, trying to hide the strain jumping from branches to branches into Clarke’s open bedroom window took on her body, and even then, Lexa kept staring at her in that inscrutable way Clarke had learned to associate with her.

Under the twilight her face stood out against the night sky, traits accentuated by strange shadows that turned her into a statue, marble cheekbones and kohl-drawn eyes. Clarke couldn’t help but stare at her like she was trying to turn her into a painting, knowing all too well already that she would draw this moment later tonight, before falling asleep, stars on paper and charcoal smudges on her fingers.

“I should kick you out for that quote,” Clarke told her anyway, pretending her throat didn’t turn dry. “You know that, right?”

“What quote?” Lexa said, either deadpan or innocent, who even knows.

Clarke just rolled her eyes at her and asked if the front door was good enough for her grand sneaking out plan, and Lexa’s lips quivered as she told her it would do. For all Lexa pretended to be stoic and smooth-edged, after months of exposure in their art class, watching the unflappable class president duck her head and scrunch up her mouth every time someone looked at her photos, Clarke had gotten a pretty good idea of her tells. Hovering awkwardly by the door with hands stuck into her pockets as Clarke changed was one. Slipping from her ugly Christmas sweater into something resembling a decent hoodie and choosing against swapping her pajama bottoms to avoid Lexa seeing her exposed thighs and discovering by the occasion that she didn’t own a pair of jeans that weren't currently stained, Clarke smiled to herself.

When she turned back, Lexa was staring intently at Clarke’s ceiling cluttered with tiny plastic stars she made when she was twelve, and suddenly, Clarke was the one with self-consciousness creeping under her skin. She wanted to justify herself, say anything, but Lexa just turned to her, smiled her quiet smile, and said: “Not very accurate, is it?”

“Oh, because your ceiling has constellations-appropriate stars plastered on it, uh?” Clarke retorted, then, upon seeing the face Lexa pulled: “Don’t even say it.”

Lexa laughed silently all the way into the corridor and they stayed quiet as they tiptoed down the ladder that climbed up to Clarke’s self-assigned room in the cellar, the stairs that faced her mother’s bedroom where they shushed each other noisily and jostled around, the hallway, the front door, the white picket fences that surrounded the Griffin house, such a tired, boring cliché. They stayed quiet all the way into Lexa’s shitty, fifth or sixth-hand car, jarring against the suburban background, until the silence became stretched with something that Clarke didn’t feel like considering and she started fiddling with the radio. If  _ Heroes _ came out of the speakers, she decided, she was going to say fuck it and tell Lexa to turn the car around.

Instead, a boy’s voice crooned in sputtering bad quality about losing himself getting to heaven, a song that sounded familiar from a playlist Lexa had tuned in to her dashboard last week.

“So is this how it’s going to go every time I break up with someone?” Clarke tried to joke, throat aching with the effort. “You’ll be standing outside my window with a boombox ready to comfort me with late-night chicken wings or something?”

Lexa’s gaze lingered on her as she said: “Or something.” Beat. “I thought we were not going to Chick-A-Fil anymore unless it’s to watch Murphy get beaten up in their parking lot again?”

“First of, that was one time, and Murphy should know better than to get into Anya’s face by now, so he kind of got it coming,” Clarke pointed out because who the hell even told the team captain softball wasn’t a real sport? “Second of, even in as shitty a town as this, there’s still about twenty fast-food drive-ins to choose from.”

Lexa rolled her eyes at her. “When is the last time you ate something that wasn’t deep-fried?”

“Wait, they can  _ make _ those? Weird,” Clarke said, immediately self-conscious as Lexa mercifully snorted at her unfunny quips.

If they drove around town for two more hours bickering over which food to get, the dark shapes of buildings intertwined with bright neon signs, just to wind up going to the McDonald’s where Jasper gave Clarke extra fries like they always did, neither of them was really complaining about it.

When they stopped at the cliff where Finn used to make out with her every other Friday evening, and probably to make out with his other girlfriend all the other days of the week, Clarke’s heart didn’t even ache anymore. Instead, she sat on the hood Lexa's car and let the other girl frown at her when she stole her fries. She told her about constellations as if Lexa didn’t already know them, feeling thrown back in time, in half-forgotten memories of her father tracing the outlines of Andromeda and whispering about princesses in the sky.

They stayed silent for more than ten minutes before Lexa shifted towards her and said, voice softer than it ever got at school: “I’ve never liked Finn anyway.”

“You don’t like any of my friends,” Clarke shot back, which wasn’t completely true but wasn’t wrong either.

“I don’t  _ don’t like _ them,” Lexa shrugged off. “I just don’t care much about them.”

Clarke turned on her side to face her, instantly wishing she hadn’t when the half of Lexa’s face turned into hues of blue by starlight made her breath catch in her throat.

“You don’t care about  _ anyone,” _ she said, the unsaid  _ I wish I didn’t either _ stagnant between them.

Sometimes in her sixteen-year-old brain Clarke kept thinking that she just cared too much, about schools and friends and teachers and her parents’ opinion and people countries afar and the mess that was their future, about everything and everyone, an all-encompassing worry that her father said was her greatest quality and that just made her feel overwhelmed and scared and  _ tired. _

“I care about you,” Lexa said instead. She gulped and her eyes carefully didn’t waver from Clarke’s. “I care a lot,” she admitted.

“Oh,” Clarke said, and until every prolonged, unending second Lexa leaned in first, she pretended not to look at her lips and wonder what it would be like if she sat with Lexa before Finn in that arts class and went to the exhibit with her instead of him and let Lexa tuck her hair away behind her ear and kissed her in the back room of the class in between half-dried oils and unopened boxes of charcoal trying not to laugh so the teacher wouldn’t think of opening the door and ruining a very ugly pseudo cubist painting by pushing her against it and doing all the things she sort of wishes they were doing now.

But before kissing her, Lexa smiled at her, clear eyes crinkled and shining with the constellations above them in that vulnerable way Clarke almost never caught a glance of, and she thought that perfect timing is for fuckers and that anyway, they were never allowed to grow old unless it was together.


End file.
